Escape from Dubai: The mystery of the missing princess

No interest in a country that might lock me up for getting raped. None.

My thoughts exactly.

I don't understand why any woman would support a country like that.

Totally agree with the sentiments on this thread, the human rights abuses have been known of for years and I can’t understand why anyone would holiday there in knowledge of that. Plus it’s all so fake anyway. Built on lies, and the blood of the workers.
Their treatment of women is possibly the worst in the world. Horrific

I would never go on holiday there because of the abuse of women and exploitation of workers, but luckily I’ve never had any interest in it as a place anyway and tend silently to judge those who go there both for their ignorance of the way people are treated and for their boring holiday destination.

I had to stop there on a long haul flight a few years back and felt I was chosen for a body search as a single woman travelling with a child (though I am married). It was upsetting and I hated being in the gilded and even-soulless-for-an-airport airport. I will never choose a route which takes me through there again.

I had no idea about how the princesses had been treated until this was in the news this week. Absolutely appalling.

We stayed there overnight last year on the way back from Australia. I’ve never seen my husband so ill at ease as when we were walking around Jumeirah. He said last night while watching this programme that this would never have happened to a son of the sheikh and I reckon he’s right. Plus the way migrant workers are treated - the film of the royal beating and shooting towards an Afghan worker who was probably on about £1 a day was shocking.

We agreed we’re avoiding the UAE as a stopover in future (we go to Aus/NZ every couple of years).

I hope Latifa, and Shamsa, are ok but it doesn’t sound good.

Bean, I also avoid changing planes there, just like I avoid the Emirate airline, no matter how allegedly awesome the service.
No interest in a country that might lock me up for getting raped. None.

I don't know how anyone can live there, work for them, enable them.
It has been a major influence in my decision to go for an electric car.

We are always told on MN that we don't know what we are talking about by expats who live there.

And what a great experience it is, quality of life, living in the compounds, glitzy Dubai, beautiful desert.

I won't even change planes there.

Probably permanently knocked out by drugs the same way she has described happened to her sister for the past decade or more - as Latifa described in her youtube vid.

But, of course, the West will go along, as we always do, when it serves Western economic or geopolitical interests. Western values my arse. Our dear leaders should just fess up and publically acknowledge that our western values are profits, profits and profits. And the only beef they have with Putin is that he got in their way making profits by renationalizing Russian fossile fuels. They don’t give a shit about human rights in Russia, just like they don’t in Ukraine, the UAE, Saudi Arabia or anywhere else for that matter. This is all so absurd.

Or this poor student that they tortured into confessing. Bloody awful country that won't be getting my holiday money.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/matthew-hedges-uae-uk-student-spying-dubai-prison-solitary-durham-univeristy-abu-dhabi-a8585891.html%3famp

Apparently she’s been ‘found’

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/06/dubai-says-missing-princess-safe-home-attempted-escape/amp/

They probably just don’t care Called

Everyone I know who’s been says oh it’s fine for the westerners - but that’s not really the point, is it?

DH was telling me about this programme this morning.

Grim

I am afraid that if anyone tells me they are visiting as a tourist, I assume they are a mindless and vacuous zombie.

not one response to the thread, though.

brocade there was a thread recently fullnof Mumsnetters who live in the UAE making out it's got a clean human rights record and all is fine and dandy there for women and foreign workers.

The wilful blindness was astonishing.

Why do people want to go there?!
Hideous country,shocking human rights.
Her story is heartbreaking. Women are the lowest of the low.
It just makes me very sad & angry.
Pil have just been on a holiday there & I have zero interest in their holiday stories 

A friend of mine gave me some books to read about how life was for women in the UAE. I was in tears for most of it - young women drowned by their fathers in the family swimming pool for the sin of talking to a non-family man. Women locked in rooms and unable to see anyone for years and years and years for bringing some perceived shame upon their family. Girl babies buried alive in the desert for the shame of being born female. Girls having their clitorises and labia removed without anaesthetic so they could never have sexual fulfilment (I won't say FGM because that lessens the horror of it). Women being beaten and killed regularly and it being within the law because it was their own family doing it. I don't understand how anyone can go to such a country and support them through tourism.

Such a sad story. Such abuse of women in the Middle East. The Egyptian celebrity (I think Actress) arrested last week on obscenity charges for wearing a see through long dress that showed her legs.
It's another world. Although it's pretty shit for women in the West too, in so many ways.

I can already see Merkel‘s Twitter banning any mention of it in the name of being inclusive.
As for Latifa‘s inability to interest any media or kick start this ‚escape Dubai‘ NGO into action: I sure wonder how far the tentacles of the UAE reached there, preventing action.

Have never fancied Dubai bc I suspected it of this kind of abuse. Now I know for sure, I won't even stopover there. Awful

I was saddened by this. And that it had happened to her sister too. I hope she is well. but I very much doubt it.

I tried to listen to it on WH yesterday, noisy baby, going to listen again. Can't get my head around it, completely shocking.

A horrible story - one amongst a torrent of stories anout murdered and abused women in recent weeks.

I haven't heard anything explicitly about this from my Dubai friends, but more about workers in the building industry.

I didn't see the programme so thanks for this thread.
AI have a short piece about her (and the others) on their webpage www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde25/8977/2018/en/

I started a thread on this to ask people currently in Dubai what’s being said on the ground jut after the documentary ended. Nothing in the press that I’ve seen, but when I lived there — ten years ago now — there were lots of rumours about errant royals being ‘disappeared’ and punished within the family. It was always difficult to know what to believe, and nothing was reported, obviously.

Not one response to the thread, though.

And yes, would be very interested to her the FCO denying approaches from high-up UAE officials.

I heard something about this on the radio but couldn't hear it properly because of my kids. At first I thought it was some sort of far fetched drama!
I have friends working in Dubai and have heard some awful things from them